Flavor Flav Wants a Clock on His Tombstone

I
n my 45 years on Earth, I’ve never seen a person place this order at a restaurant.

Flavor Flav is at the Millennium Hilton near the United Nations in New York the day before Thanksgiving. He’s in town to catch the Macy’s parade with his family and attend to some business before taking off in a few days. The breakfast menu has the requisite overpriced steel-cut oatmeal and full American breakfast, but Flav’s order is simpler, and weirder: A glass of milk and a glass of orange juice, each with its own straw, drunk together. “I’ve been doing this for years now,” the 65-year-old says after bobbing his head to consume both simultaneously. “Milk and orange juice together; it’s a Creamsicle.”

The makeshift Popsicle feels like a small window into the naturally absurdist mind of hip-hop’s greatest hype man. The loquacious Public Enemy veteran who kicked a debilitating drug habit to become a reality-TV superstar and bon vivant always seems to be everywhere all at once. After becoming the official sponsor and head cheerleader for the 2024 Olympic women’s water-polo team, he’s now hoping to carry the torch during the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. If he’s not hanging out with the Bidens or appearing in commercials, he’s accosting your favorite celebrity backstage to show sincere, almost childlike love for their work. In a fully fragmented landscape, few rappers turned pop culture juggernauts have become global icons more than Flav and Snoop Dogg.

Over the course of 90 minutes, the man born William Drayton will wax on everything from missed career opportunities to Donald Trump to what will be on his tombstone.

What are the most important rules that you live by?
Be good to myself. When I first wake up in the morning and I open my eyes, I thank God for letting me have another day of life, because there’s a lot of people that went to sleep last night [and] didn’t wake up. So I’m grateful.

Another rule: Don’t hurt nobody’s feelings. There’s days I don’t want to take no pictures or sign autographs. But when I see the excitement of [someone] meeting me for the first time, I got to take those feelings, put them to the side, [and] give that fan what they want. That’s why my son’s name is Karma; what goes around comes around.

A third rule: If anybody was to disrespect me, I don’t disrespect them back. I just get the hell away from them. Whatever they did to me, it’s going to come back to them, but not through me.

Who are your heroes?
My mom and my dad, because if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be able to be here talking to you. And Quincy Jones. I’ve always wanted to do movies, and Quincy’s [1990] movie [Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones] was the first movie I was in. Me and Miles Davis narrated that.

[A man approaches Flav for a photo with his friends. It’s the first of eight or so groups that will ask for a photo during our interview. Flav obliges each request, asking them where they’re from and what brings them to New York.]

You auditioned for Chris Rock’s role in New Jack City, but claim Chuck D and other members of Public Enemy tried to block you from getting it. How would your career have been different if you had landed it?
Honestly, a whole lot different. Because you see how Chris Rock’s career took off by doing that role; same thing would’ve happened to Flavor Flav. I went and read for the role, and, man, I made it. Chuck and Hank didn’t want me doing that. They went behind my back and told the producers I couldn’t do that, so they gave my part to Chris. I would’ve took off, but they didn’t know where Public Enemy would’ve went. And Public Enemy was hot as fish grease at that time.

What advice do you wish you could give your younger self?
[It’d] be the advice that I didn’t take from my moms: Don’t do things that could be bad for your life and your health. My mom used to tell me, “Now you know all your do’s and you know all your don’ts. So do your do’s, leave all your don’ts alone, and you’ll be all right.” I didn’t listen to that.

What is the biggest misconception about you?
People underestimate my power of knowledge. People wouldn’t expect me to know a lot of the things that I know. People have a tendency of trying to take advantage of me with the things that I don’t know. But with the things that I do know, I can see how shocked they are once it comes out of me, and they’ll be like, “Whoa.”

You play around a dozen instruments, right?
I play 14 different instruments.

Does it bother you that most people don’t realize that? I saw you on Instagram playing a piano beautifully.
Not at all, because it don’t bother me when I don’t have knowledge about other people. When I don’t have knowledge of other people, I wonder, does it bother them? So does it bother me? No. I never thought about it, and I never would let it bother me. One thing about Flavor Flav, he loves to shock the world. I’m like a Criss Angel. I love to razzle dazzle you. And that’s what my boy Criss Angel does: He razzle dazzles people. [Criss Angel gets a special section in the acknowledgements part of Flav’s memoir. Flav spends the next five minutes extolling his favorite Criss Angel magic tricks in incredible detail.]

You wrote a song in your high school band called “Brass Monster.” What was that about?
Well, it was a spoof of the Munsters, and I added my own twist to it. Back in the day, I was a musician and I used to have bands. So we played this at our high school talent show, and we won with this instrumental “Brass Monster.” And that was one of the first songs that I ever really wrote as a band. And not only that, but how crazy is that, that later on in life, Al Lewis became my friend.

Wait, what? Grandpa Munster?
That’s right. Grandpa himself.

How does that happen?
He used to have a restaurant on Bleecker Street, called Grandpa’s. That’s where I met Grandpa, and we exchanged numbers, and we were friends before he passed away. [Pauses.] And that’s where I got introduced to arugula. Hanging out with Lyor Cohen.

And Eddie Murphy was in your ninth-grade English class. Did you see his talent back then?
He was a regular kid; we were just regular neighborhood kids around that time. Eddie got his break back in the day doing a spoof of the Gong Show, and our neighborhood bar Mr. Hick’s Place in Roosevelt would throw these Gong Show contests. Eddie won six weeks in a row, and I heard that’s what won him a spot on Saturday Night Live.

A teenage Tupac Shakur wanted to beat up a guy for stealing Public Enemy’s plastic guns on tour. Tell me what you remember from that night.
We did a concert, and somebody broke in our dressing room after the show and took Chuck’s Raiders jacket and hat and the plastic Uzi guns that the S1Ws carry. We found one of the guys, took him into the dressing room, and the group is interrogating this guy. “Hey, where’s our stuff at? Where’s our stuff at?” Next thing you know, my group start punching on the guy. Tupac was like, “Man, y’all step back, man. Let me show y’all how this is done.” Tupac took off his belt and started beating the guy with his belt.

The guy was on the floor. I grabbed a fire extinguisher on the wall and was just waiting for that clearance because I was going to hit this guy in the fucking head with this fucking fire extinguisher. But Tupac pushed me up against the wall real hard, and I dropped the fire extinguisher. “What the hell is wrong with you, man? You’re gonna fucking kill a guy.” Tupac stopped me from committing a murder by accident. If it was not for Tupac stopping me from hitting that guy with that fire extinguisher, I would not be sitting here with you. So thank you, Tupac, for saving my freedom and my life.

You got in trouble a lot as a kid. What’s the worst prank you’ve ever played on somebody?
Back in the day, we used to all play basketball in the summer [as kids]. Whoever wins the game wins [a] beer. This guy named Abraham lost, ran off with the beer anyway, and drank it. The world is going to think Flavor Flav is crazy for this shit, but it’s all right. We took another bottle, poured the beer out, and peed in it. We peed in the motherfucking bottle and washed the bottle off and put it in the refrigerator.

The next day, we went out to play ball, won again, and Abraham did the same thing. We let him go get that bottle on purpose because the bottle was sitting there sweating in the heat. It was looking good and everything, man. “Ha, ha, ha, ha.” He took a swig of that shit and was like … “Yo!” We was all dying laughing. He deserved it.

People included you in their Sexiest Man Alive issue alongside Denzel Washington and Andy Garcia. Did that surprise you?
It surprised me big because I don’t feel I’m sexy. I was shocked to see it. There was a lady that came up to me in the airport and said, “Ooh, Flavor Flav. You so ugly, but I want to take a picture with you.” And you know what I did? I said, “OK, come on. Take the picture. Let’s go.” I did not offend her back or anything.

That‘s a weird thing to say to someone you want a photo with.
And I was told by some people that I was ugly.

In 2006, The New York Times wrote that you bear “more than a passing resemblance to a California Raisin character.” It’s a big jump from that to Sexiest Man Alive.
Yeah. And not only was I a California Raisin, but I was also a Ninja Turtle. But it made me feel real good inside. I’m like, “Wow, how can I be one of the sexiest men alive? You can’t even see my eyes. I got on sunglasses.” But, hey, I ain’t going to lie. I’ll take it.

You wrote in your memoir, “I’m an adrenaline junkie, and I always have been.” What’s the craziest thing you’ve done for an adrenaline rush?
The most insane thing that I’ve ever done was skydive during Flavor of Love and accidentally pull the cord way too early. [My instructor] was mimicking me and … I thought he was telling me, “Pull the cord, pull the cord.” That was the longest trip to Earth I ever had in my life. It was so scary. I couldn’t breathe. I almost passed out because the air was so thin up there.

Also, train surfing on the top of a train going through the New York subways. You lift your head up one inch and fucking steel beams will fucking…

“People underestimate my power of knowledge. People wouldn’t expect me to know a lot of the things that I know.”

You’ve had to miss a lot of Public Enemy shows in the past due to drugs and other issues. When Public Enemy did shows without you, did you feel like they were just keeping the train rolling or did it feel weird?
I felt left out, and also I felt jerked. A few of them were my fault, but a few of them, no. The gigs that I did miss was all my fault. But when there was some Public Enemy videos that Chuck did that I wasn’t in that I was supposed to be in, that’s where I felt jerked.

What’s the most extravagant clock you’ve ever worn?
A cuckoo clock that was made for me in Switzerland [around 1988]. It’s the shape of a house, and on the bottom of it has a man on a spring, which was the pendulum. When the spring bounces up and down, there’s a little Flav that comes out at the top that says, Yeah, boy. Yeah, boy. Yeah, boy. That’s three o’clock.

So 11 o’clock, it’s doing…
Yeah, then it does 11 Yeah, boy’s.

You’ve gone viral for your backstage meetings with famous musicians. What dead historical figure would you have wanted to meet and get a picture of?
There’s one that’s dead right now that I did meet that I wish I would’ve got a picture with: the one and only James Brown. It was at the DMC [DJ] Championships in London, and he had on a brown glove. I’ll never forget it. The only time that I ever met James [and I] never got a picture with that man.

At your lowest, you were spending about $2,500 a day on drugs. What was rock bottom for you?
I had an out-of-body experience. I was laying in bed one time in my mother’s basement after getting high so much. I rose up through the living room, up through the roof, and I started going way up in the sky. It was a nice, peaceful flight. The next thing you know, I started coming back down real fast, and when I landed back into me, I was like, “Holy shit, what the fuck was that?” I said, “Man, you’d better chill out and you’d better back up, because you’re heading somewhere where you really don’t want to go.”

In January 2018, you tweeted of Donald Trump, “You are one crazy motherfucker. Very destructive, very destructive, most destructive president in U.S. history. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.” Do you still feel that way?
[Pauses for 20 seconds.] Time is different now from way back then. Donald Trump is a lot different than he was way back then. [Pauses for 50 more seconds.] I don’t feel like that anymore. I feel that he could be [destructive] if he wanted to be. There’s things that Donald Trump does as a president that I feel other past presidents in life would be scared to do. And there are a lot of other presidents I feel that was scared to stand up to Putin. Donald Trump ain’t scared of nobody. He’s a backyard bully dog. He’s a bully. I feel that Donald Trump can have a way with other world leaders to where these wars that are going on right now would end. So I feel that he can be more useful now than destructive.

And, no, I am not pro-Trump. Definitely not pro-Trump. But we ain’t got no choice but to let him do his job because he’s the president now. So everybody that’s protesting against Trump right now can protest all they want, but it’s not going to stop him from being president. I’m just facing reality. We ain’t got no choice but to sit back and let the man do his job.

Would you perform at his inauguration if he asked you to?
Fuck no! Hell no!

You’re one of the most approachable people in music. Did you have this mindset as you started to get famous, or has your relationship with fans changed over time?
I just never thought about it. I just lived day to day, and I take it as it comes. I live by those rules that we were talking about earlier: Just be good to your fans, and keep it real with them. This is who I am. And no matter how rich I get, how popular I get, how famous I get, I’m not going to change. There’s only two things in this world that changes for Flavor Flav: the weather and my drawers.

There’s a bigger conversation happening now in music over boundaries between the artist and fans. Do you think about those boundaries between you and the audience, or does it almost just feel like one thing?
It’s all one thing. I don’t have no boundaries. I’m a people’s person. I spread myself very thin. I want every single person in that audience to get a piece of me. I just be hoping and praying that I got a piece of me for myself at the end of the day.

Does it bother you at all if people only know you through Flavor of Love or Surreal Life and not your musical career?
It don’t bother me at all. It makes me feel so good to know that I can take a whole different audience and bring it to Public Enemy.

Did you have conversations with Chuck when those shows were going on? Did he ever weigh in with his opinion?
I never had conversations with Chuck about it. I never cared about what anybody else had to say about whatever I was doing. They just let me do my thing. Chuck was always happy that I was able to do these things and the whole nine.

You’ve worn hundreds, if not thousands, of clocks in your life. When it’s your time, which one do you get buried in?
You would have to ask my family that one, because I’ll be dead. I don’t know what the fuck is going on. But I might request that on top of my coffin is a built-in clock. And then also when you open up the lid, there’s a big clock.

But the tombstone should be a clock too, no?
Yeah, and on the tombstone, it should be a clock.

What does the tombstone say?
“It’s about time.”

In your memoir, you wrote about the powerful effect God has had on you. To steal James Lipton’s question: If heaven exists, what would you like God to say when you arrive at the pearly gates?
Welcome home.